Robert Morris

Robert Morris (20 January 1734-8 May 1806) was a US Senator from Pennsylvania from 4 March 1789 to 4 March 1795, preceding William Bingham. He was a member of the Federalist Party.

Biography
Robert Morris was born in Toxteth, England in 1734, and he migrated to the Thirteen Colonies in his teens, quickly becoming a successful businessman. After the French and Indian War, he came to oppose taxation without representation, and he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly and to the Second Continental Congress. Although he was reluctant to break with his birthplace of Great Britain, he ultimately became a major American financier during the American Revolutionary War. From 1781 to 1784, he served as Superintendent of Finance of the United States, and he was the central citizen in the government. From 1781 to 1784, he also commanded the Continental Navy as Agent of Marine. In 1783, Morris oversaw the creation of the first US coins, and he also proposed the creation of a national bank; while his views were not adopted, they inspired Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson to create the decimal money system, and Hamilton would later start America's bank. In 1787, Morris was elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, which created a more powerful federal government. It was Morris who suggested Hamilton to serve as President George Washington's first Treasury Secretary, having himself declined the position. From 1789 to 1795, he represented Pennsylvania in the US Senate, and he aligned himself with the Federalist Party and supported Hamilton's economic policies. In 1798, he went bankrupt due to the 1796-7 panic, and he spent several years in debtors' prison until the US Congress passed a bankruptcy act to release him. He left prison in 1801, and he died in Philadelphia in 1806.